How can you improve your mental health at work?

When you feel like things are not going well, or haven’t gone well, it can really get you down, feeling like you’ve not achieved everything you wanted.

Yet often there are lots of things that happened that you don’t give yourself credit for.

Sometimes you need to step back and get some perspective.

Here is a little process that I’d invite you to do before we enter 2018, during a short break or when you’re not working, it should take about half an hour. You’ll need a pen and a few sheets of paper. These are expanded versions of some of the questions I asked in my last blog and we’ll be covering this and much more details on the 6th January.

Firstly, take stock of what you’ve achieved

As you look back at 2017, what didyou achieve this year? Which projects, plans and outcomes did you put into place. Whatever the win, whether it be big or small, did you manage? You’ll get chance to list the less positive ones in a bit, for now stick to the things that worked well.

I want you to write them all down – list them out, go back through the diary, or float back in your mind through the year and write down all the things that went well in relation to work.

It might be that “you’re still there” and that’s a win for you, or that despite other factors in other areas of life, you kept working. Maybe your organisation merged or you work for yourself and gain new clients.

List everything and keep asking, what else worked well this year in my work/career?

Secondly, what didn’t go well?

Here’s your chance to get the stick out and really beat yourself up about all the things that didn’t go well in the last 12 months, what didn’t go well this year?

What didn’t you achieve that you’d like to have done?

What choices did you make that you wish you hadn’t in your career/organisation?

What did your inner critic keep you awake at night reminding you about?

Write them all down, get them out of your system and get them listed down as well.

Finally, what’s 2018 going to give you?

I know that you’ll realise that the magic crystal ball of “hindsight” doesn’t exist, and yet I suspect that the second list will be full of things that you wished you’d known at the time you made the decision. But of course, you didn’t know then, what you know now and you made the choice you made at the time with the information you had!

So what will you resolve to do in 2018? What feedback can you take from what happened?

I’ve just watched the new Star Wars film and Yoda has yet another great quote in this movie…

“The greatest teacher, failure is”

It’s true though, if it went well – hurrah, if it didn’t, I bet you learnt tons of new information, and have new choices for the next time around!

Another quote that often comes up on our NLP Training is also from Yoda!

“Do or do not, there is no try”

Either commit to it, or don’t as without the commitment you might as well look at doing something else that you can commit to.

So as you look at that list of all the things you have achieved in 2017 and those things you didn’t, what are you going to commit to making happen in 2018 and how will you learn and take feedback from that second list to make sure your plans end on the first list next new year?

Give yourself additional support to make 2018 happen

We’re running our NLP for your career workshop on the 6th January 2018 – the first Saturday of the New Year; all about getting the right work/life balance and focusing on making those goals happen in 2018.

The workshop is only £23 for the entire day and we’ll be sharing how we connected with our passion for helping teach people that change is possible through the use of simple Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) approaches.

Be that a change in job, or a change in the mental mindset around your work, we know you’ll leave the day inspired and ready to face 2018 with more passion and the knock-on effects into all the areas of your life will be an added bonus